fj ; ' 0 ::: - - / fARTS I LA AL : -ruIJA 5AtAP 13.11) $2-'>'5 $G S) " rW1 ffil IßuRliH?VllliX '2.9lj 2 I') "' . .t . . .'," V BE.E.ç )TE,w' . 1t; if")....... .. .. ç I b .11) =-..... _.. TlLf.T Of SOLE: if. () 0 '" (', - .( - J. SPAÛ\Ht:fíl ,.. 2.;{ '. ' ... . .'.. .! 9s 0 { Q r' '-' _ ( LAS'A N L 9 1 ..-" - . I JI <:: :a 7 c=- ". 'I ) U NJ i;' . ... : I W7) ('? Ð .. 0 r"" .. /' { " -r'" ),_" 1 ___ L'" 1'.. '.. , .. /""-......: ..." \ ' CLASH OF THE DNA SCIENTISTS he tried to provide the com- mission with final verification of the identities of the skeletal remains. Although he, person- ally, accepts the vermct of Rus- sian, English, German, and American scientists that these are the Romanovs, he discov- ered that some senior officials of both the Patriarchal Church in Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad still had doubts. Both churches continued to be bothered by the heteroplasmy found by Gill and Ivanov in Nicho- las Irs DNA. Subsequently, Soloviev and the Russian gov- ernment commission were told unofficially that Dr. King and her colleagues in Berkeley, using the teeth brought to America by Dr. Maples, had confirmed the findings of Gill and Ivanov in England, in- cluding the heteroplasmy. But, officIally, the commission has received no report from Berkeley. Therefore, the Patri- archal Church, which is considering the canonization of the imperial family, insisted on further testing and hinted that it might withdraw its representa- tive from the government commis- sion unless its request was granted. The commission relented, and Soloviev re- activated Pavel Ivanov's earlier propo- sal that the remains of Nicholas II's younger brother Grand Duke George be exhumed from the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in St. Petersburg and the DNA of the two brothers be compared. George's exhumation took place be- tween July 6 and July 13, 1994. There was difficulty lifting the marble plate over the coffin, but once that was done the body inside was found undisturbed. The upper part of the body was still dressed in superbly preserved clothing; the lower part lay in six inches of water (a reminder that St. Petersburg was built on a swamp, where water is never far be- neath the surface of the ground). The scientists removed a piece of the top of the Grand Duke's skull, a part of a leg bone, and seven teeth for DNA testing. Originally, Soloviev had intended to send these fragments to Dr. Gill in En- gland, but when word of this plan leaked out there was, in Soloviev's words, "a lot J. Nr\Í5 . of yelling and screaming." The result was a series of negotiations with the United States Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, which eventually agreed to perform the tests. "So now we can say that we are handing this examination over to people who are totally indepen- dent of us," Soloviev said. "Although our specialist Dr. Ivanov will be there, too." Pavel Ivanov arrived at the gleaming new Armed Forces Institute of Pathol- ogy DNA laboratory, in Rockville, Maryland, on June 5th of this year, bringing with him a section of the fe- mur and tibia of Grand Duke George. Ivanov also brought with him from Moscow two other potentially useful pieces of evidence. One was the strip of bloodstained handkerchief originally obtained in Japan and from which no usable DNA could be extracted in Gill's laboratory. In the A.F.I.P. labora- tories, with their special air locks and air-purifYing systems designed to reduce laboratory contamination to a mini- mum, and with the latest equipment for enhancing degraded DNA, Ivanov in- tended to try again. He also brought with him a strand of Nicholas Irs hair, cut when the Tsar was a child of three, preserved in a locket in a St. Petersburg palace, discovered there by Soloviev, and given by him to Ivanov. "There is no follicle attached, and cut hair has very little DNA," Ivanov said, "but the 93 . A.F.I.P. has enormously powerful amp- lification and sequencing equipment. We will do our best." These DNA tests-on Nicholas Irs brother, Nicholas Irs blood, and Nicho- las Irs hair-are to be completed this month. T HE last ceremonial burial of a Rus- sian tsar took place in 1894, when Alexander III, the father of Nicholas II, was interred in the Cathedral of St. Pe- ter and St. Paul. The Tsar died of ne- phritis in the Crimea at the age of forty- nine. In St. Petersburg, red -and -gold court carriages draped in black waited at the train statIon for the body and the family. For four hours, the cor- tège advanced slowly across the city. The only sounds were the beat of muf- fled drums, the clatter of hooves, the rumble of iron carriage wheels, and the tolling of bells. Sixty-one royal person- ages, including three kings, arrived to join the family mourners. The ministers of the imperial government, the com- manders of the Russian army and navy, the provincial governors, and four hun- dred and sixty delegates from cities and towns across Russia came to pay their respects. For seventeen days, the body of the Tsar lay exposed in its coffin while tens of thousands of people shuffled past. A century later, the Russian govern-